Comments on: A respectful disagreement with some good friendshttp://anthonyfranco.net/2009/10/03/a-respectful-disagreement-with-some-good-friends/
I write on business philosophy and how technology can improve humanityTue, 24 Feb 2015 14:31:53 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: Jonkhttp://anthonyfranco.net/2009/10/03/a-respectful-disagreement-with-some-good-friends/#comment-4855
Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:17:45 +0000http://anthonyfranco.wordpress.com/?p=387#comment-4855PS – just noticed how OLD this thread is, WTF it appearing in twitter. Apologies for flogging a very dead horse.
]]>By: Jonkhttp://anthonyfranco.net/2009/10/03/a-respectful-disagreement-with-some-good-friends/#comment-4854
Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:15:59 +0000http://anthonyfranco.wordpress.com/?p=387#comment-4854I couldn’t disagree more. Obviously your projects are structured so that developers hold critical positions and are terrified to relinquish them. A good UX diesigner/architect would sort most of these initial problems, including *gasp* the prototype, allowing the developers to get on with buiilding a fantastic solution. That’s not to say the dev team should be sidelined – they should be involved from the start- but the issues you describe are CAUSED by not allowing the right people to handle the job. Developers and design – pah.
]]>By: anthonyfrancohttp://anthonyfranco.net/2009/10/03/a-respectful-disagreement-with-some-good-friends/#comment-4836
Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:28:27 +0000http://anthonyfranco.wordpress.com/?p=387#comment-4836Honor to have you comment on my blog Bill – like I said, I have a ton of respect for you. I am also know for making extreme statements to make a point every once and a while (okay, maybe more than once and a while)

I was more tweaked with Forrester for not putting context around the statement – I am in total agreement that technology has basically ignored design (and even worse, they have largely ignored the end user). But I have also been a part of many projects where we were brought in to implement a design that another team has created, only to find out that the designers never considered technological challenges.

I guess where the pendulum sits has a lot to do with perspective – if we are working with IT or a system integrator, we do not see nearly enough thought put into design; if we are working with marketing or a creative agency, we do not see tech involved soon enough

]]>By: Bill Buxtonhttp://anthonyfranco.net/2009/10/03/a-respectful-disagreement-with-some-good-friends/#comment-4835
Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:03:26 +0000http://anthonyfranco.wordpress.com/?p=387#comment-4835Sometimes one needs to make an extreme statement in order to push the pendulum away from the opposite extreme at which it is stuck. The reality is that programming at the start is the norm, and has been the status quo from the beginning. And it has failed. Leaping in and prototyping in code from the start has shown its value through the systems that it has produced. It has given us an industry which is incapable of developing new products internally from scratch, and made the industry almost completely dependent on mergers and acquisition for growth. And for every start-up that has succeeded in using this approach to get successful products to market, there are 100’s, if not 1000’s that have failed – mainly due to following this old dogma.

Of course, balance is needed, and programmers should be part of the design team from day one – as should business people. But if you hang your project’s hat on starting in on prototyping, statistically speaking, your prototypes will always evolve into your product. You will explore far fewer alternatives that you would using a design-based approach, and at best, you will get a competent implementation of a sub-optimal design.

Personally speaking, I invested too much energy, time, and sleep deprivation in graduate school in computer science to waste the resulting skills on second rate designs.

Programming is essential. It is just not sufficient. And, until we make a strong break from the past, we will just proceed into the future using the same old techniques at worst, or minor tweaks, at best. Our users deserve better, as do the skills of the programmer.

]]>By: amyhttp://anthonyfranco.net/2009/10/03/a-respectful-disagreement-with-some-good-friends/#comment-4825
Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:13:46 +0000http://anthonyfranco.wordpress.com/?p=387#comment-4825I know this is the wrong place to post this, but I don’t see another place. I couldn’t find the “subscribe to RSS link.” Could you help me out?
]]>By: Alan Dennishttp://anthonyfranco.net/2009/10/03/a-respectful-disagreement-with-some-good-friends/#comment-4824
Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:48:16 +0000http://anthonyfranco.wordpress.com/?p=387#comment-4824I couldn’t agree more with you. It’s very refreshing to see this viewpoint from more people in the UX field. I work very closely with my developer teammates, for exactly the reasons you list. We jump into prototyping real UI almost immediately, in many cases. And, in my opinion, technologies have become so approachable and flexible (Flash/Flex, WPF/Silverlight, etc…) that you really don’t have much of a reason to fall back on only having mockups or paper prototypes.

There’s always a place for Photoshop mocks, especially when quickly iterating through aesthetic approaches. But for interaction models… Nothing beats the insights you gain through iterating on an actual prototype. Both in terms of what you learn while actually making it and playing with it, but also how early and often you can put it in front of people and enjoy real observation.

I have done paper prototypes before. I don’t plan on ever doing them again. They had a place, in their time, but for me, that time has past.

That being said, one of my favorite design tools is still my whiteboard… ;) (But that is also a big indication of workflow – sketches are ephemeral. Often times, the design IS the prototype.)

]]>By: Rodrigohttp://anthonyfranco.net/2009/10/03/a-respectful-disagreement-with-some-good-friends/#comment-4820
Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:10:18 +0000http://anthonyfranco.wordpress.com/?p=387#comment-4820I completely agree. Based on your experience, what do today’s dev tools lack in order to give good support to both prototyping and actual code development?
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